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That's not really a useful definition. A government mandating covid lockdown will almost immediately reduce the number of traffic accidents - a causal link - ev
by dtech 5y ago
That's not really a useful definition. A government mandating covid lockdown will almost immediately reduce the number of traffic accidents - a causal link - even thought there are intermediate steps of people not needing to drive to work, so there are less people driving. It's an indirect effect but still a causation.
- conductr 5y agoIf you were an academic studying traffic accidents you would talk about reduced traffic, relative risk of having an accident, and covid/wfh/shutdown would be a great context of why those things had changed. For example, if covid reduced number of cars on road and thus absolute number of accidents. Your saying you'd determine it's safer to drive because covid. However, in a relative sense, maybe pre-covid you had a 1% chance of being in an accident and during covid you had a 5% chance of being in an accident. What caused that? You can't just said covid made everything screwy and caused it all. You need to dig deeper. Are people running red lights because there are fewer cars on the road? Are people distracted because TikTok? Are they racing around trying to find toilet paper? Sure covid did all those things, but simply blaming covid is not really a useful analysis except in casual conversation; not academic research.